Nancy Yao, president of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York’s Chinatown, has been named the inaugural director of the Smithsonian Institution’s future American Women’s History Museum. Critics looked away from the nomination, citing allegations of complacency towards Yao towards gentrification, class discrimination and the prison state through a variety of controversial decisions during the last years of his presidency at MOCA.
“While MOCA can see the returns of the $35 million in prison funding that Nancy helped secure, we are happy to say so long to their disastrous president,” said Youth Against Displacement, an activism group anti-displacement and anti-gentrification in New York. York City, in a statement to Hyperallergic. “Instead of seeing her ash legacy through, Nancy wipes the blood from her hands and flees to DC.”
“Her new role in this museum meant to honor women raises the question of what kind of women this museum is supposed to represent?” add the group.
MOCA board appointed Yao, a former Goldman Sachs executive, serving as president of the museum in February 2015 while she was executive director of the Yale-China Association. In January 2020, a five alarm fire tore up MOCA’s collections and research building at 70 Mulberry Street (formerly the site of the museum), endangering the museum’s archive of over 85,000 documents and objects. Yao has been widely credited with casting the devastating fire in a positive light and bringing national attention to the museum’s efforts to save its damaged collections. The museum was closed to the public for about a year as Yao and his team initiated “MOCA on the road” under the projectors.
Much of the controversy surrounding Yao’s role at MOCA began later in October 2020, when the Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB) activist group released a open letter to the museum describing Yao’s involvement in accepting the $35 million “community gift fund” for a permanent home and performing arts center for the museum from the Bill de Blasio administration in October 2019. The funds were administered as part of de Blasio’s plan to shut down the Rikers Island Detention Center and create or expand prisons in four boroughs.
In the letter, CAB refers to Yao’s testimony during a City public scoping session on the borough’s prisons in September 2018, where she complained that the New York Department of Cultural Affairs had not given the museum money to secure a permanent home while the expanded Chinatown prison complex would receive $300 million. While Yao continued to publicly deny accepting the fund on behalf of the museum for more than a year, the mayor’s office released a Letter on points of agreement (page 16 of the document) to the public on October 19, 2019, which specifically described his commitments to MOCA “directly related to the borough prison system.”
The CAB also criticized Yao and the museum’s affiliation with board member and luxury real estate developer Jonathan Chu, saying his development projects directly contributed to the gentrification of Chinatown and widened the chasm between members. of the Chinese elite and the working class.
MOCA reopened to the public in July 2021 following a wave of protests outside the museum space at 215 Center Street. Outraged by MOCA’s acceptance of the $35 million and Chu’s connection to the closure of beloved dim sum restaurant Jing Fong, dozens of protesters young and old picketed the museum to call for a boycott, reject the fund and remove Chu from the museum’s board. Amid protests and removals of artwork by artists, Yao maintained at Hyperallergic that the museum has always been against the construction of prisons.
After a week of protests, Yao publicly accused the elderly protesters of being paid to picket by then-City Council candidate Christopher Marte — a claim Marte and the protesters vehemently denied. The protesters started demanding Yao’s resignation of the museum following what they called “blatant racist and ageist insults” towards the elderly in Chinatown.
The Smithsonian Institute declined to comment on the allegations and controversies surrounding Yao’s leadership. MOCA did not respond to Hyperallergicrequest for comment.
Yao will remain in his position at MOCA until June. As the American Women’s History Museum awaits the development of a brick-and-mortar building, Yao will be responsible for “procuring a national collection, curating permanent and current exhibits, and creating virtually accessible educational resources,” according to A press release.
The long-awaited new institution is not expected to open until 2030. In the meantime, activists have a lot to say about the prospect of Yao’s leadership: “Raising the president of a museum under active boycott, a woman who despises hers, accusing older women of being paid protesters and trying to bribe them with cheap tote bags calling the cops on young women on the picket line is this museum just trying to be a national version of MOCA, falsely celebrating a different kind of identity?”
